Every Day
by Katchia
Summary: The crew is curious to know where Jack goes every Thursday morning...


In the early hours of the morning, if you stood just across the street on the other side of the river by that one large brick warehouse with vines running up and down the sides, The Harbor's Nigh pub stands backed by moonlight.  
I told you to stand in just that spot because if you didn't, you would see a small, run-down building instead of the stately silhouette that would appear from just across the street on the other side of the river by the large brick warehouse. Take a picture.  
If you want to see another interesting silhouette, stand at the west window when the sun rises through the east window and you will see a man. He sits across from a wispy cloud of solidified air that probably comes about from the leaking pipes in the ceiling. Maybe. I'm not a scientist.  
But do try and keep out of sight. It would be quite suspicious if you were caught staring in the window at Captain Jack Harkness of Cardiff. I don't doubt he would take the opportunity to arrest you and/or add to his collection of frozen bodies. Anyhow, if you do get caught, don't let him know it was me who told you.  
Still interested and want to know what day Jack Harkness visits The Harbor's Nigh? Well, if you still insist on going, get in line. Only one person a day. Not that a different person showing up and staring in the west window every single day would be less suspicious.

Still, you could go any day. He's always there at 5 a.m.

* * *

"I'm going out."

Gwen looked up in surprise. "But we only have a few hours left to-"

The door slams shut on her protests.

Jack ran out into the cold night air – nearly morning, now – and caught a cab on the nearly empty corner street. His watch told him it was 5:11. The taxi delivered him to the wrong side of the river; he hurriedly crossed it himself. The lights of The Harbor's Nigh were always on, day or night.  
The door jingled when he stepped over the threshold like an enticing candy shop, though the interior was anything but delectable. His boots clacked on the shiny hardwood floor. Whether that was because of polish or run-off from the river, he didn't know, but at least the floor wasn't squishy. Unlike various nuclear waste sites he'd visited at the end of the last war he'd been in. He couldn't quite remember which one that was.

"Ah, Jack. There y'are."

"Morning, Phil."

Phil the bartender handed him a glass, filled to the brim with his regular, with a nod. He then went back to wiping the counter slowly.

Jack walked past the crowded sets of tables, past the three or so other people that occupied the pub. His regular booth awaited him, empty, as always.

He sat.

Across from him, the woman smiled. Her head was bent forward, long white hair draped over her face and shoulders.

"I was beginning to doubt you would arrive."

Jack smiled. "I've never stayed away before."

"No."  
She stared into her drink, cupping it with two of her pale hands. Jack sipped his beer cautiously.

"Jack."  
Jack glanced up. His watch ticked to 5:38.

"How many times has it been?" She was looking out the window across the brightening river.

"Since what?" He sets his empty cup down on the dark table.

"Since nothing. How many times have you tried to kill yourself?" She shifts, quickly, and her hair is behind her ears and behind her back. She picks at her linen blouse with a slender nail.

"I have never _tried _to kill myself." She doesn't look surprised. Possibly because she has heard this before, maybe because she suspected it. "I always died. But I always came back."

"Good for me."

"Good for you."

Phil the Bartender gave him a fond look as he passed him his new glass. "Talkin' to yourself again, eh Jack." He doesn't sound surprised either. Maybe because he's heard this before; possibly because he could sort the insane from the sane. He's worked there for a long, long time.

"Never once in my life." Jack raised his glass to the man. "Who do you take me for?"

* * *

Gwen had never seen a man so dedicated. Sure, he obviously did nothing else but work, judging from the fact that he either never slept or slept precious little, and inside the headquarters, at that.  
But aside from that, Jack always disappeared during some hours in the early morning. She never would have noticed, until she arrived early one morning for lack of sleep and ran into Jack returning. He wouldn't tell her where he'd gone, and maybe she shouldn't have asked, but the expression on his face was one she had never seen before:  
She had always been deceitfully curious. So she stuck a recording device into the pocket of his coat.

Owen gave her a look.

"You don't think that's actually going to work, do you."

"Yes, I do, Owen. Don't you want to know where he's been going at 4 in the morning every single day?"

Owen rolled his eyes and went back to typing something into the computer.

"He already keeps enough secrets from us. What if he's, oh, I don't know…conspiring with some alien army? They have those, don't they?"

"Well, yeah, _probably,_" Owen turned in his chair, crossed his arms, and fixed her with his skeptical stare. "But if you haven't noticed, he's more invested in the safety of our country than anyone else I've ever met. Even the Queen."

"You've met the Queen?"

"No, but – oh, would you just stuff it already?"

Gwen sat in her chair, headphones over her ears, monitoring the progress of Jack's journey.

"He's taken a cab."

"How lovely for him."

"Don't be daft, Owen. He's not doing anything now…I think he's walking." Gwen furrowed her brow. "Why would he be walking when he just took a cab?"

"Don't be a nuisance, Gwen. Maybe he likes walking by the seaside."

"Oh, blast. He's crushed the microphone."

* * *

"You're late."

Jack crashed into the booth opposite her, sloshing mug in hand and a fading grin.

"When I first met you I didn't expect you to have such a good grasp on time. Most don't. You, though," He took a hearty swig. "Always know exactly what time it is."

She pointed over his head. He looked up, and, feeling a bit foolish, realized for the first time that a clock hung directly above him.

* * *

"I still think he's up to something."

Gwen dropped into her chair and hooked her feet around the bar on the bottom.

"He's always up to something, Gwen. Doesn't mean it's particularly malicious."

"Well, no, but he's definitely hiding something."

Tosh didn't bother to look up, but she waved her hand in a "forget-about-it" kind of way and went to back to dusting her new artifact.

"He's been doing this for years; if he's hiding something then he's doing a spectacular job of it."

Her feet plopped onto the ground in astonishment.

"What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's not really anything of interest, is it? Besides, he leaves for hours on end without telling anyone where he's going all the time."

"Yeah, well," She tapped her fingers along the desk. "It was of interest to me."

* * *

She was quiet today.

Jack watched her hair float around her head. She had been looking out the window when he got here and now the rising sun cut lines through her face. Her cup lay on its side, alone on the table.

"How many people was it?"

Her cold gaze rested just above Jack's nose.

"How many people was it that you killed?"

"I heard you the first time." She turned back to the window. "Seventeen."

Jack waited.

"How many people have _you_ killed?"

"Thousands." Jack sighed. "Though it depends on what you mean by 'people'."

* * *

Gwen was pacing, and it was putting Jack on edge. So he left, hours earlier than usual, swinging his coat over his shoulder and heading out the door. Only when he started walking up to the main road did he notice his companion.

"Gwen," he said. His coat flapped around his knees. "What are you doing?"

"I'm coming with you. If I'm hungry, then Owen and Tosh aren't going to last much longer."

So they took a cab. Midway through, Jack answered his phone, said some affirmations while looking somewhat agitated. Gwen asked, of course.

"I have another errand to run, why don't you get the food and get another cab back," he answered when she was halfway out the door, waiting for him to follow.

He wasn't there when she got back to HQ, and he didn't show up for the rest of the night. Gwen bit into her calzone with frustration, noting this all down on her pad of paper.

Owen was picking at his with curious repulsion. "What is this?"

"It's called a calzone, surely you've heard of it."

"Why couldn't we just have gotten pizza?"

"Because," Gwen set her dinner down and reached for another pen. "I wanted to see where Jack was going."

"And that went so well."

"Like you're doing anything about it!"

Owen shot her a glare from across the room where he was going back to decoding something, or maybe Tosh was doing that seeing s she had been sitting silently, hunched over her keyboard and thoroughly ignoring them both the entire evening. "I'm doing something much more important, and actually relevant to the case at hand? If you haven't forgotten, we're still trying to find the-"

"Yeah, yeah." Gwen waved her sauce stained hand. "But aren't you the least bit curious where he's gotten to?"

* * *

Jack had gotten to, none too obviously, the pub. In these later hours, the small tavern was about half-full; a few men at the bar and the occasional group of women in the back.

He slouched down in his usual booth, unfamiliar chatter backing up the headache he'd had for days.

"Never seen you here this time of night, Jack. And without a drink, too."

He looked up so sharply that his neck cracked. Across the table, lounged a thin woman in dingy, slightly outdated garb, cup in hand and a questioning look.

"You're one to talk." Jack smiles back at her, and leans forward to shuck off is coat. "Are you here often?"

She takes a sip that doesn't seem to make it to her throat, and swallows. "Only when you're here."

* * *

When Tosh finally looks up, it's to see Gwen rushing madly around. Beeps are coming from the small device in her hand.

"Hang on, that's my tracker!"

"Yes it is," says Gwen.

Owen slides into view down on the lower level, brandishing a syringe a pot of green liquid. They watch Gwen dash about, gathering bits of paper, weapons, her coat, and finally, the keys to the van. She turns to face them, expectantly.

"Well," She says, when they haven't moved save for the increased narrowing in Owen's eyes and the slime dripping off of his syringe. "Are you coming?"

There is a clattering from below and Owen reappears, goggles knocked off and an even squinter look than before. "Where is it you're going? Does this have anything to do with Jack's disappearances?"

"So you admit it's weird, don't you? I'd forgotten I'd dropped a tracker into Jack's coat!" Gwen doesn't miss the twin looks of exasperation her co-workers send each other.

"Say what you like, but now we know where he's been going every day."

"Doesn't mean we have to invade his personal privacy," Owen points out, disappearing again. A cloud of gas erupts a moment later, bringing with it the hardly missed smell of rotten cabbages. His head pops up again. "Then again, he probably deserves it, the secretive bastard."

* * *

Phil, who also gives the impression that he appears whenever Jack arrives, sets down the two glasses Jack ordered and gestures at them with a somewhat confused expression.

"You know, I've never seen you bring anyone here before, Jack."

"I like the company I've got."

She smiles fondly.

Phil, having asked the question, smiles fondly, too, and pats him on the back. When he's left, Jack slides the glass to the opposite side of the table. She stares at it for a moment, and he stares at her until reluctantly, she reaches towards the glass. Her hand passes right through it.

Jack groans, slumping onto the table. "How many is that?"

"Six," She laughs. "Eleven more to go."

* * *

After abducting Ianto on the way out the door (he was returning with another round of coffees he was so keen on fetching for them), they end up, guns drawn, in front of-

"A pub." Owen lowers his handgun. "It's a bloody pub."

Tosh looks at Gwen.

"Well, he's in there. Don't you want to know what he's doing?"

"Drowning his sorrows, most likely." With a dissatisfied noise, Owen turns toward the van where Ianto is keeping watch. He calls out that Jack once told he doesn't get drunk to which Owen retorts that that doesn't mean he _can't_, and Ianto clarifies that he meant that he _can't_, and therefore, doesn't.

* * *

With a look of resignation, the woman across the table tilts her head. "You usually only drink on Thursday mornings."

"I usually have a job, you know."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, it's not a Thursday, is it?"

"Neither is it morning."

To answer this, she pulls back the cuff of his drooping sleeve.

* * *

Owen opens the door and ushers the ladies in, because he's a gentleman, and doesn't want to get shot first.

* * *

"Tell me about your lover," Jack asks when he's definitely spent the night at the bar.

"The one who died on his own or the one I let die?" She looks less tired her companion, but still knackered, like she's spent a night working the graveyard shift at the local infirmary and needs a cigarette.

"Both of them."

"I will," She turns her hands over and sets her cup down on the cold counter. "If you tell me about Suit."

"Again? Don't you get tired of hearing about him?"

"Do you get tired talking about him?"

"No." Jack confesses, but he's paying attention to the commotion in the front of the bar. "But I think something is going on." He stands up, reaching his hand to the small of his back where his revolver is harnessed. About to draw it, he stops, startled, then relieved, then annoyed.

* * *

"This is Priscilla." Jack explains when they've so graciously stopped by his booth to check in with him before wrecking the entire pub. "_Not_ an evil spirit, and I'm certainly not having a secret affair."

"But we've got readings of unnatural activity occurring here for the past week." Tosh holds up her phone, in case Jack wanted to look at the readings that said, if he had looked, there had been increased unnatural activity occurring there for the past week.

"It's probably the power of the stories I've been telling Jack, about how I killed seventeen people and incinerated their bodies in the hospital." She relishes in their conjoined looks of horror and disbelief, the latter directed towards Jack.

"If she's your friend, why are you being so suspicious and secretive about it?" Gwen has lowered her gun at Jack's insistence that 'even if you did shoot her it wouldn't do anything, seeing as she's made up of air', but still keeping a rather tight grip on it.

"Because he is, haven't you been listening to anything I've been saying?" Owen has long since tucked away his weapon and is now enjoying (or would be, if the girls –mostly Gwen – weren't there) Jack's third pint.

"You're not Suit, are you?" The woman peers at him from across the table. She's been gripping a mug but hasn't taken a drink in the minutes they've been here.

"Er, no." He wipes his mouth and nods out the window. "If you're talking about Ianto then he's still out in the car. Didn't want to come in. Didn't seem surprised when we showed up here either. Reckon he knew about you?"

"Oh, yeah," She says knowingly. "Gave him a fright a while back. Talks about him all the time, he does." He pokes her thumb at Jack, who is still arguing with Gwen.

"So you've killed seventeen people, have you?"

"You didn't kill them, don't be melodramatic," Jack says loudly. "You miscalculated a few surgeries. It wasn't intentional. Come off your high horse."


End file.
